In one of the many mouth-watering clashes of this weekend, Liverpool will play host as they square off with Manchester United on Sunday. Liverpool are coming off the back of a 4-0 thrashing of Marseille which should definitely boost their confidence but I don’t think you can compare Manchester United to Marseille at the moment.

Manchester are sitting in second place with 48 points while Liverpool are only two places behind with 45 points. A win for Liverpool will tie them on points while Man U has a good chance to open up a 6 point gap and claim the top of the table (depending on the outcome of the Arsenal/Chelsea match).

Ferdinand and Vidic are expected to start in the heart of Manchester United’s defence and Hargreaves and Anderson will probably run the midfield. Torres will probably start for Liverpool as he’s in blazing form right now (interestingly Ferguson has admitted that he tried to sign Torres for years before Rafa was able to snap him up, perhaps due to the Spanish connection). Mascherano is apparently fully fit and ready to go after some doubts as to whether he would start (he was limping about during the UEFA CL match after taking a knock). Hyypia and Carragher will most likely have to content with Rooney, Tevez and Ronaldo. A job that I don’t envy at all, especially considering the latter may walk away with world player of the year the next day.

Things that may unsettle the Liverpool camp include Sissoko’s dissatisfaction with the coach for giving him very little playing time recently. He has found himself always behind Steven Gerard, Javier Mascherano and Xabi Alonso. He seems to be fed up and will more that likely leave during the summer. Rafa is also under great pressure to produce the results after altercations with the club owners. Apparently he has a meeting following the game which could decide his fate. That’s a whole lotta pressure.

It’s alway tough to play Liverpool at home and neither Arsenal, nor Chelsea have been able to crack them this season. But I have a feeling the Manchester are up to the task.

Liverpool hosted Marseille in a game where the former failed to deliver. Liverpool seemed to be lacking inspiration and motivation but the same was not true for Marseille. The visitors controlled the match right up until they scored in the 77th minute and it was only then that Liverpool seemed to wake up and tried to pull a goal back and at least grab a point. The goal was scored by Valbuena and was perhaps the goal of the matchday. A perfectly driven strike from outside the area into the top-right corner which bounced off the cross-bar into the net and left Reina as a mere spectator.